The challenge of predict ing meme success has gained at tention
from researchers, largely due to the increased availability of
social media data. Many models focus on st ructural features of
online social networks as predictors of meme success. The
current work takes a different approach, predict ing meme
success from linguist ic features. We propose predict ive power
is gained by grounding memes in theories of working memory,
emot ion, memory, and psycholinguist ics. The linguist ic
content of several memes were analyzed with linguist ic
analysis tools. These features were then t rained with a
mult ilayer supervised backpropagat ion network. A set of new
memes was used to test the generalizat ion of the network.
Results indicated the network was able to generalize the
linguist ic features in order to predict success at greater than
chance levels (80% accuracy). Linguist ic features appear to be
enough to predict meme t ransmission success without any
informat ion about social network st ructure.